White Balance Help

[peeker]

Maybe some of the experts here (Tom?) can lend a hand to explain the difference in colors. Why in these three high speed, consecutive photos, does the color change from one to another?

I had the white balance set on "white fluorescent light". The strange thing in the first and second photo stayed at the same shutter speed and look completely different.

I don't get it... can someone please explain? (EXIF data should be available)

(I later switch to full manual and got more consistent results.)

[Mark Kaplan]

Fluorescent light flicker maybe?

[LSCSN.com]

Yes you are catching the cycle of the lights. Jason Palmer commented on this a while back which I found to be very helpful. I'm going to try and re-state what he said. Most if not all of these lights cycle at 1/60th of a second. So if you set your shutter speed to 60 you would not see these color shifts.

However, we know that we can not shoot action at 1/60th of a second because there would be too much motion blur. But the closer you can get to 1/60th the less you will see.

I would suggest setting your shutter speed to 200 or 250 and see how that works out for you and try and catch the action at it's peak in order to eliminate as much of the blur as possible.

[peeker]

So with these at 1/750th I have a 1 in 10 chance to catch the light correctly...
That makes sense as I set my camera on manual later at 1/250 and didn't see this color shift.

Nice to have a fast camera... didn't expect this... just a messy clean up with DPP.

[bret]

hi,scott
nice captures. i will look at your other post next. i shoot youth karate for the aysma, which is a small karate org. that provides scholarships. check out the website @ aysma.com. the shots are mine. the tourney is held in a cave so i shoot w/flash.
b